Christopher S. Lynch is chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He received his master’s and Ph.D. from UC Santa Barbara. He joined the UCLA Engineering faculty in 2007. Previously, he was a professor of mechanical engineering and an associate chair for administration at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Professor Lynch has held several leadership roles at UCLA Engineering. From 2008 to 2013 he was director of the Master’s of Science Online Program, which is now the top-ranked online engineering graduate program in the country. He has served on the university-wide Faculty Committee on Educational Technology and several departmental administrative committees, and has advised multiple student groups, including the formula and Baja racing teams. He is past chair of the Aerospace Division of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and remains active in the organization.

His research interests are in ferroelectric materials. Professor Lynch is the leader for the Multiscale Material Modeling thrust of the NSF-sponsored Engineering Research Center for Translational Applications of Nanoscale Multiferroic Systems. He is also a member of the California NanoSystems Institute.

Lynch has authored more than 150 papers presented in journals and at conferences. He is a fellow of ASME and SPIE, the international organization for optics and photonics. He has received the Adaptive Structures and Materials Systems Prize from the ASME Aerospace Division, the Smart Structures Lifetime Achievement Award from SPIE, and earlier, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Smart Materials and Structures.